All the political parties have the Right to Buy scheme high on their agenda. In my new vlog I discuss what this means for the Social Housing sector.
httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WBuORQkdT8
Transcript:
All the political parties have the right to buy scheme high on their agenda. Whatever happens on 7 May, the right to buy scheme will go through an overhaul in England.
There are approximately 2.5 million housing association tenants, and of those around 1.3 million will qualify to buy their home through the right to buy scheme.
Housing association tenants that qualify to buy their home can do so but the discounts are smaller under the right to acquire scheme than under the right to buy scheme from a local authority.
One of the new policies proposed is that the discounts applicable under the right to buy or the right to acquire schemes will be much more similar.
The houses that have been sold off historically were supposed to have been replaced with new houses but the National Housing Federation say that since 2012 only 46% of the houses sold under the right to buy scheme have been replaced.
An example was quoted in the Housing section of the Guardian when it stated that most housing associations have told the National Housing Federation that they expect to only replace half the homes currently being lost to right to buy, and 10% saying they don’t expect to be in a position to replace any at all.
For example, Phoenix Community Housing, a housing association in Lewisham, south-east London, retains only a small proportion of the proceeds from each right-to-buy sale under current legislation. One of its homes valued at £205,000 in 2014 was sold through right to buy for £105,000, so the housing association only received £27,332 – far short of the amount needed to build a replacement.
The national waiting list for social housing in England now stands at 1.36m houses, covering around 3.4 million people.
These are challenging times for the social housing sector. Housing Associations are challenged with boosting the affordable housing supply in a changing housing market. It seeks new ways to develop a better functioning housing sector with a range of effective funding mechanisms to try to drive new home volumes and ensure a strong pipeline of affordable homes to continue to be viably developed.
To hear more about the Changes to the Right to Buy and Acquire and their implications for leasehold property management please come to our Social Housing Conference on Thursday 14 May. We have speakers from Ardens Charmbers, LEASE, T&E and a former judge from the First Tier Tribunal.
Topics include:
- Increasing your chances of success at the Tribunal.
- Recovering legal costs through service charge
- Housing associations-getting on with the private landlord
- The structure of a headlease, lease and underlease
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